Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: a concise review.

Writing on the definition of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), Dr Nicholas Gross once compared it to defining love, “everybody knows what it is, but each individual describes it differently.” In 1997, the US National Heart Lung and Blood Institute and the World Health Organization held an international workshop that led to the first Global Initiative on Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) report. The most recent iteration of the GOLD guidelines defines COPD as